On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war
activist holding a sign: Nuke the evil scum, it
worked in 1945! That's exactly what George Bush has
done. America's mega billion dollar war in Iraq is indeed a
NUCLEAR WAR.

Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of
depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a liberation
gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a
component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure
sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear.

Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this
lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy
ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of
firing thousands of DU rounds per minute.1 Tomahawk
missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are
DU-tipped.2 The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU.3
These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed
with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or
near them.4 The A-10 tank buster aircraft fires
DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield.5

DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution
as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches
all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding
poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.

Support our troops

Ironically, support for our troops will extend well beyond
the war in Iraq. Americans will be supporting Gulf War II
veterans for years as they slowly and painfully succumb to
radiation poisoning.

U.S and British troops deployed to the area are the walking
dead. Humans and animals, friends and foes in the fallout
zone are destined to a long downhill spiral of chronic
illness and disability. Kidney dysfunction, lung damage,
bloody stools, extreme fatigue, joint pain, unsteady gait,
memory loss and rashes and, ultimately, cancer and
premature death await those exposed to DU.

Award-winning journalist Will Thomas wrote: As the
last Gulf conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune
systems reeling from multiple doses of experimental
vaccines offer little defense against further exposure to
chemical weapons, industrial toxins, stress, caffeine,
insect repellent and radiation left over from the last war.
This is a war even the victors will lose.6

DU

When a DU shell is fired, it ignites upon impact. Uranium,
plus traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny,
ceramic particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled,
uranium oxides lodge in the body and emit radiation
indefinitely. A single particle of DU lodged in a lymph
node can devastate the entire immune system according to
British radiation expert Roger Coghill.7

The Royal Society of England published data showing that
battlefield soldiers who inhale or swallow high levels of
DU can suffer kidney failure within days.8 Any soldier now
in Iraq who has not inhaled lethal radioactive dust is not
breathing. In the first two weeks of combat, 700 Tomahawks,
at a cost of $1.3 million each, blasted Iraqi real estate
into radioactive mushroom clouds.9 Millions of DU tank
rounds liter the terrain. Cleanup is impossible because
there is no place on the planet to put so much contaminated
debris.

Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I was also a nuclear war. 320 tons of
depleted uranium were used against Iraq in 1991.10 A 1998
report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms
that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed
by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome.11 The Gulf War
Veterans Association reports that at least 300,000 Gulf
War I vets have now developed incapacitating illnesses.12
To date, 209,000 vets have filed claims for disability
benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses
from combat in that war.13

Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at
Georgetown University, is a former army medical expert.
He told nuclear scientists in Paris last year that tens of
thousands of sick British and American soldiers are now
dying from radiation they encountered during Gulf War I.
He found that 62 percent of sick vets tested have uranium
isotopes in their organs, bones, brains and urine.14
Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland corroborated his
findings. In other studies, some sick vets were found to be
expressing uranium in even their semen. Their sexual
partners often complained of a burning sensation during
intercourse, followed by their own debilitating
illnesses.15

Nothing compares to the astronomical cancer rates and birth
defects suffered by the Iraqi people who have endured
vicious nuclear chastisement for years.16 U.S. air attacks
against Iraq since 1993 have undoubtedly employed nuclear
munitions. Pictures of grotesquely deformed Iraqi infants
born since 1991 are overwhelming.17 Like those born to
Gulf War I vets, many babies born to troops now in Iraq
will also be afflicted with hideous deformities,
neurological damage and/or blood and respiratory
disorders.18

Army health physicist Dr. Doug Rokke was dispatched to the
Middle East to salvage DU-contaminated tanks after Gulf War
I. His Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq
and Kuwait were contaminated with up to 300 millirems an
hour in beta and gamma radiation plus thousands to millions
of counts per minute in alpha radiation. Rokke recently
told the media: The whole area is still trashed. It
is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go
away.19

DU remains hot for 4.5 billion years. Radiation
expert Dr. Helen Caldicott confirms that the dust-laden
winds of DU-contaminated war zones will remain
effectively radioactive for the rest of time.20 The
murderous dust storms which ensnared coalition troops
during the first few days of the current invasion will have
significant health consequences.

Rokke and his clean-up team were issued only flimsy dust
masks for their dangerous work. Of the 100 people on
Rokke's decontamination team, 30 have already dropped
dead. Rokke himself is ill with radiation damage to
lungs and kidneys. He has brain lesions, skin pustules,
chronic fatigue, continual wheezing and painful
fibromyalgia. Rokke warns that anyone exposed to DU should
have adequate respiratory protection and special coveralls
to protect their clothing because, he says, you can't get
uranium particles off your clothing.

DU doublespeak

The U.S. military insists that DU on the battlefield is not
a problem. Colonel James Naughton of the U.S. Army Material
Command recently told the BBC that complaints about DU
had no medical basis.21

A U.S. Army training manual requires anyone who comes
within 25 meters of DU-contaminated equipment to wear
respiratory and skin protection.23 The U.S. Army
Environmental Policy Institute admitted: If DU enters
the body, it has the potential to generate significant
medical consequences.24 The Institute also stated
that, if the troops were to realize what they had been
exposed to, the financial implications of long-term
disability payments and healthcare costs would be
excessive.25

For pragmatic reasons, DOD chooses to lie and deny.

Dr. Rokke confirms that the Pentagon lies about DU
dangers and is criminally negligent for neglecting
medical attention needed by DU-contaminated vets. He
predicts that the numbers of American troops to be
sickened by DU from Gulf War II will be staggering.26 As
they gradually sicken and suffer a slow burn to their
graves, the Pentagon will -- as it did after Gulf War I --
deny that their misery and death is a result of their tour
in Iraq.

Dr. Rokke's candor has cost him his career. Likewise, Dr.
Durakovic's radiation studies on Gulf War I vets were not
popular with U.S. officials. Dr. Durakovic was reportedly
told his life was in danger if he continued his research.
He left the U.S. to continue his research abroad.27

Naive young coalition soldiers now in Iraq are likely
unaware of how deadly their battlefield environment is.
Gulf War I troops were kept in ignorance. Soldiers handled
DU fragments and some wore these lethal nuggets around
their necks. A DU projectile emits more radiation in five
hours than allowed in an entire year under civilian
radiation exposure standards. We didn't know any
better, Kris Kornkven told Nation magazine. We
didn't find out until long after we were home that there
even was such a thing as DU.28

U.S. vision of a nuclear planet

George Bush's ongoing war in Afghanistan is also a nuclear
war. Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would
stockpile tactical nuclear weapons including small neutron
bombs, nuclear mines and shells suited to commando warfare
in Afghanistan.29 In late September, 2001, Bush and Russian
president Vladimir Putin agreed that the U.S. would use
tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin would
employ nuclear weapons against the Chechnyans.30

Describing the Pentagon's B-61-11 burrowing nuke bomb,
George Smith writes in the Village Voice: Built
ram tough with a heavy metal casing for smashing through
the earth and concrete, the B-61 explodes with the force
of an estimated 340,000 tons of TNT. It is lots of bang
for the buck, literally two apocalypse bombs in one -- a
boosted plutonium firecracker called the primary and a
heavy hydrogen secondary for that good old-fashioned H-bomb
fireball.31

Drought-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is
now contaminated by these nuclear weapons.32 Experts with
the Uranium Medical Research Center report that urine
samples of Afghanis show the highest level of uranium ever
recorded in a civilian population. Afghani soldiers and
civilians are reported to have died after suffering
intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal
bleeding and other symptoms consistent with radiation
poisoning. Dead birds still perched in trees are found
partially melted with blood oozing from their mouths.33

Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, is a puppet
installed by Washington, D.C. Under the protection of
American soldiers, Karzai's regime is setting a new record
for opium production. Both UN and U.S. reports confirm
that the huge Afghani opium harvest of 2002 makes
Afghanistan the world's leading opium producer.34 Thanks to
nuclear weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for the
Bush-Cheney narcotics industry.35

ABC News asserts that keeping the peace in
Afghanistan will require decades of allied occupation.36
For years to come, peacekeepers will be eating,
drinking and breathing the hot carcinogenic
pollution they have helped the Pentagon inflict upon that
nation for organized crime.

As governor of Arkansas during the Iran-Contra era, Bill
Clinton laundered $multi-millions in cocaine profits for
then vice-president George Bush Sr.37 As a partner in the
Bush family's notorious crime machine, President Clinton
committed U.S. troops to NATO's campaign in the Balkans, a
prime heroin production and transshipment area. DOD's
campaign to control and reorganize the drug trade there for
the Bush mafia was yet another nuclear project.

Between 1995-2000, the U.S. and NATO fired DU missiles,
bullets and shells across the Balkans, nuking the peoples
of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. As DU munitions were slammed
into chemical plants, the environment became hideously
toxic, also endangering the peoples of Albania, Macedonia,
Greece, Italy, Austria and Hungary.

By 1999, UN investigators reported that an estimated 12
tons of DU had caused irreparable damage to the Yugoslavian
environment, with agriculture, livestock and air water, and
public health all profoundly damaged.38

Scientists confirm that citizens of the Balkans are
excreting uranium in their urine.39 In 2001, a Yugoslavian
pathologist reported that hundreds of Bosnians have died of
cancer from NATO's DU bombardment.40 Many NATO
peacekeepers in the Balkans now suffer ill health. Their
leukemias, cancers and other maladies are dubbed the
Balkans Syndrome. Richard Coghill predicts that
DU weapons used in Balkans campaign will result in at least
10,000 cases of fatal cancer.41

U.S. citizens at home are also paying a heavy price for
criminal militarism gone mad. DOD is a pollution monster.
The General Accounting Office (GAO) found 9,181 dangerous
military sites in USA that will require $billions to
rehabilitate. The GAO reports that DOD has been both
slothful and deceitful in its clean-up obligations.42

The Pentagon is pressing Congress to exempt it from all
environmental laws so that it may pollute and poison free
from liability.43

The Navy used prime fishing grounds off the coast of
Washington state to test fire DU ammunition. In January,
Washington State Rep. Jim McDermott chastised the Navy:
On one hand you have required soldiers to have DU
safety training and to wear protective gear when handling
DU...and submarines must stay clear of DU-contaminated
waters. These policies indicate there is cause for
concern....On the other hand the Department of Defense has
repeatedly denied that DU poses any danger whatsoever.
There has been no remorse about leaving tons of DU
equipment in the soil in foreign countries, and there
appears to be no remorse about leaving it in the waters of
your own country.44

DU has been used in military practice maneuvers in Indiana,
Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and Puerto
Rico. After the Navy tested DU weaponry on the Puerto Rican
island of Vieques, one third of the island's population
developed serious illness. Many people show high levels of
uranium in their bodies. Hundreds have filed a class
action suit against the Navy for $100 million, claiming DU
contamination has caused widespread cancers.45

The Navy's Fallon Naval Air Station near Fallon, Nevada, is
a quagmire of 26 toxic waste sites. It is also a target
practice zone for DU bombs and missiles. Area residents
report bizarre illnesses, including 17 children who have
contracted leukemia within five years. A survey of
groundwater in the Fallon area showed nearly half of area
wells are contaminated with radioactive materials.46

The materials for DU weaponry have been processed mainly at
three nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, where
workers handling uranium contaminated with plutonium have
suffered for decades with cancers and debilitating maladies
similar to Gulf War Syndrome.47

Prelude to a perpetual cycle of destruction, reconstruction

Emboldened by power-grabbing successes made possible by his
administration's devious 9-11 project, President Bush
asserts that the U.S. has the right to attack any nation it
deems a potential threat. He told West Point in 2002,
If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will
have waited too long.48

It is certain that Bush-Cheney future pre-emptive nuclear
wars are lined up like idling jets on a runway. Both
Cheney's Halliburton Corp. and the Bush family's Carlyle
Group are profiteers in U.S. defense contracts, so endless
war is just good business.49

The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon will create
special nuclear weapons for use on North Korea's
underground nuclear facilities.50 Next August, U.S. war
makers will meet to consolidate plans for a new generation
of mini, micro and tiny
nuclear bombs and bunker busters. These will be added to
the U.S. arsenal perhaps for use against non-nuclear
third-world nations such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon.51

The solution?

Americans must stop electing ruthless criminals to rule
this nation. We must convince fellow citizens that villains
like Saddam Hussein are made in the U.S. as rationale for
endless corporate war profits. Saddam was placed in power
by the CIA.52 For years U.S. government agencies, under
auspices of George Bush Sr., supplied him with chemical
and biological weapons.53 Our national nuclear
laboratories, along with Unisys, Dupont and
Hewlett-Packard, sold Saddam materials for his nuclear
program.54 Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the late
90s when its subsidiaries signed $73 million in new
contracts to further supply Saddam.55 The wicked villain of
Iraq was nurtured for decades as a cash-cow by U.S.
military-industrial piranhas.

If America truly supports its troops, it must stop sending
them into nuclear holocaust for the enrichment of thugs.
Time is running out. If the DU-maniacs at the Pentagon and
their coven of nuclear arms peddlers are not harnessed,
America will have no able-bodied fighting forces left. All
people of the earth will become grossly ill, hideously
deformed and will die prematurely. We must succeed in the
critical imperative to face reality and act decisively.
Should we fail, there will be no place to hide from the
slow burn of Bush-Cheney's merciless nuclear orgies yet
to come -- or from the inevitable nuclear retaliation these
orgies will surely breed.

17. The Environmental and Human Health
Impacts of the Gulf War Region with Special References to
Iraq, Ross Mirkarimi, The Arms Control Research
Centre, May 1992. See also Gulf War Syndrome Birth
Defects in Iraq at
www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html.

49. PIGS at the Trough, Arriana Huffington, Random
House, 2003 (New York Times best seller.); also The
Best Enemies Money Can Buy, From Hitler to Saddam Hussein
to Osama bin Laden -- Insider Connections and the Bush
Family's Partnership With Killers of Americans; Mike
Ruppert, From the Wilderness, 10-10-01; also Bush
Sr.'s Carlyle Group Gets Fat on War and Conflict,
Jamie Doward, The Observer (UK), 3-25-03; also
Halliburton Wins Contract for Iraq Oil Firefighting,
Reuters, 3-7-03; also Cashing In-Fortunes in
Profits Await Bush Circle After Iraq War, Andrew Gumbel,
The Independent (London) 9-15-02; also War Could Be
Big Business for Halliburton, Reuters, 3-23-03.

52. Wall Street Journal, 8-16-90: The CIA
supported the Baath Party and installed Hussein as Iraqi
dictator in 1968.

53. United States Dual-Use Exports to
Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of Persian Gulf War
Veterans, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and
Urban Affairs, 1992, 1994; U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq
Buildup, Washington Post, 12-30-02.